CHUN JIE 2009

After our travels in Yunnan, we returned to Chengdu to stay with our host family. Je Min and Rong Rong picked us up at the airport. We drove to his school to wait for their son, He Da, to finish his university classes. When that was accomplished, Je Min, He Da, and I went to play tennis while the women rested. We batted the ball around in 50 degree weather. I was to note the vast improvement in He Da's game due to his tennis lessons, and I did. The women then joined us, and we washed and went off to enjoy dinner in town. Then it was home and to bed early to rest up for the trip to Je Min's hometown the next morning.

The next day we and it seemed like most of Chengdu were up early and on the road. The trip from Chengdu to Nanchong should have taken about two and a half hours. About four hours into the trip, we stopped and the men folk got out and relieved themselves along the road. We enjoyed some fruit and started the trip again. The women folk got their chance at the next rest stop, which was like Grand Central Station at rush hour. Believe me (Renee), braving a crowded rest room in China is no mean feat. I was thinking about the people who are trampled at soccer matches as I tried to stay upright in the entering crowd while watching the exiting patrons struggling to get out through the narrow doorway that served as both entrance and exit. By this time, we were no longer hurrying. We had missed all our deadlines, but got to Nanchong in good spirits and had a meal of left overs. Renee and I stayed with Je Min's sister while the family went off to Grandmother's house. We were made as comfortable as possible, being given the parents' bedroom for our home. In the evening the entire family joined together and drove to the Jaling River where we sent off Kong Ming Lights, which are miniature hot air balloons made of paper and powered by a candle. They are usually red or gold and about the size of a bushel basket. According to legend, the lights were invented by a general during the wars of the Three Kingdoms as a tactic to light the sky so the army could fight at night. As you can see in the picture, we lit a candle in a paper lantern, and the hot air allowed it to rise into the sky. With it ascended our good wishes and hopes for the new year. This was the day before the eve of the Chinese New Year Spring Festival (Chun Jie).

The main event for the day before the New Year is making dumplings. In this family everyone has a role. The secret family recipe is provided by the Grandmother, the Nai Nai. The filling is prepared by much chopping of ingredients by the women. The dough is made by one of the uncles. Small chunks of dough are pulled and rolled into flat circles. Others are ready to start stuffing and crimping the dumplings. All the other tasks continue simultaneously because we are making a lot of dumplings. Huge pots of water are bubbling on the burners and the dumplings are brought to a boil three times to prepare them for eating. The eating had to be done in shifts. Renee and I worked on many parts of the making, but wherever we worked, the process was slowed, so we were moved on quickly. The misshapen look of my dumplings (Renee) became a family joke, and now and again someone would hold up a dumpling and say, "I wonder who made this one." But they all tasted great, and we ate and ate and ate.

As the dumpling feasting was drawing to a close, we put on the TV to watch the national spectacular on CCTVI. They tell us everyone watches it. It is a variety show which intersperses traditional and modern Chinese entertainments. (It looks just like the Friday night entertainments at our school. Obviously, the students steal the format from the professionals.) In our home the show was on but not watched intently. Mostly people talked. The kids got out their musical instruments and played. Time was taken out for group pictures. Every once in awhile something in the show would get our attention such as a feature on the earthquake and a salute to some heroes. It all seemed pretty tame for a new Year's Eve. THEN at about 11:45, everyone jumped up and wriggled into their coats; we were off to the river again. We were going to set off fireworks. So were the other 500,000 people in Nanchong. It was a harrowing ride through town as rockets flew overhead and bombs burst on both sides of the car, or so it seemed. When we got to our destination, we could hardly see because of the smoke up and down the river and along every side street leading to the river. That did not stop us. A big box of works was set up and lit and a five to ten minute show followed of small but lovely fireworks. Then we each got out our individual rocket firers and we shot them across the street and toward the river. Sparks and ash and smoke were everywhere. The university president, the foreign guests, the whole family, the grandmother - amazing. And the NOISE. It is said that all this noise scares away evil spirits and ghosts. This is serious noise. Then came the sparklers, big sparklers and firecrackers, big firecrackers. From outer space it had to look like Nanchong was being attacked. Eventually, the celebration ended for us and we were off to bed, lulled into slumber by the sounds of explosions. We woke up to them as well.

The main event of New Year's Day was an intergenerational basketball game. Ji Min's sister, He Li, married a man with four brothers. All of them love this basketball game. It is fathers vs sons. The sons had won for the first time last year and both the fathers and sons were ready for the grudge match. I was caught between the two as I was to be the referee. I "let them play" which meant the fathers held, pulled and pushed to stay in the game. The young men groaned and complained vociferously as they ran and scored and won the game anyway. About 13 people played, so there were substitutes. The women folk and some men folk came to watch "the game." There was a score keeper and a timer and the grandmothers cheered. The family that plays together stays together.

The main event of every couple of hours was eating. Just as we had pictures taken in all sorts of groups, we had meals with all sorts of groups. Every meal was an orchestrated event. I started with an assortment of cold dishes. Then the main courses came out one at a time. It is a time for eating meat and the young men ate the meat like they had never seen it before. We enjoyed the food and the banter around the table and sometimes the games. At each of these meals there is toasting and drinking - beer, wine, bai jiu, whiskey. It is all lighthearted and sort of controlled, but there is obligatory toasting and pairings of drinkers so. The culture is a drinking culture so the young men need to be trained. This family setting was a good way to have this happen. In Nanchong the smallest gathering for one of these meals was 14 and the largest was 22. Restaurants do a great business at this time of the year. Every place we went was filled to capacity, but we were never inconvenienced because we were always in a private room. We can't remember if Chinese restaurants in America have that private room option. It is great for small gatherings, a little removed from the hustle and bustle and loud talk of the main restaurant.

In addition to all of this celebrating, we had a great time seeing Nanchong and its surroundings. We visited the sites of events and people associated with the Three Kingdom Period. The book The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the classics of Chinese literature - check it out on Youtube. We visited the old city of Langchong with its Confucian temple and examination hall where the civil service exam was given every three years. Did you know that people actually died during those nine day exams? They were very stressful. It was also possible to climb a tower in the old city and look down on the roofs of the hutang, a rare example nowadays of old China where the one room houses are crowded together, side by side. Also, we went to Deng Xiaoping's home. It is close by and there is a beautiful exhibit there about his life. The exhibit doesn't tell what happened from 1969 to 1979 - interesting. People really admire what he was able to do to help make China what it is today. We were there in the morning; by afternoon there were long lines just waiting to get into the grounds.

After four days it was time to move on to Rong Rong's family home in Suining. Everyone knows that most beautiful girls come from Suining. (This claim is made by many towns in China.) This drive was much shorter and in only about an hour we arrived at Rong Rong's sisters home where we would stay. Again we were given the sister's room and private bath. Everything that could be done to make us comfortable was done, including watching the English speaking station on the television. JeMin and his family were off to the grandmother's home again, this time Rong Rong's mother and father. In both of these homes, there is limited English spoken, so we are pretty proud of ourselves for communicating and surviving and, we hope, being good guests.

We missed New Year's here, but Spring Festival continued. We had big meals every few hours and ate the traditional foods at the appropriate time alternating dumplings and Tang Yuan (a rice ball filled with - poppy seeds, brown sugar, sweet bean paste, peanut butter). For this family the highlight of the week was the return of the son from Chengdu for three days. The day after we got there, he arrived. Li is a special policeman in Chengdu. He ran along with the Olympic torch to protect it. He is in an elite group of 36 men aged 25 - 35. His parents waited and cheered his arrival. He had a hard time because his girlfriend also lives in Suining. He had to balance mom and girlfriend for three days. The biggest meals surrounded his return. He brought a bottle of Vodka and that was the beverage of choice for toasting this time. He was placed beside me - his girl friend was across the table. He spent much time walking around the table lingering with her, but toasting each person in their turn. In Suining with a smaller family the meals size ranged from 8 to 13 people. (Talking to some of my students, I learned that their largest meal had 5 people. The effects of a one child policy.)

We had a good time seeing the sights of Suining as well. We enjoined searching for ducks on the Ya (Duck) River and sunning ourselves along the river and drinking tea on one particularly beautiful afternoon. Guanyin's Temple, which is the largest of her temples in China, is in town. HeDa and a friend were our guides through the temple grounds and its traditions and cuisine. We saw the old and the new in Suining -- a brand new university going up in a barren lot and the old university torn down. Will the trees they transplanted from one environment to another survive? After three days, it was farewell to Suining.

It felt like home to get back to Chengdu. We moved back to where we had stayed this summer and settled in. We ended up staying longer than we planned because of the people we were to meet and Peace Corps obligations we had to meet. We visited the Peace Corps offices and picked up my passport. We saw the medical staff and talked and ate with several of the staff working there. We then met with three groups of students from my Model school class this summer. Parker and Paul are now freshmen students in Beijing and Chongqing respectively. They shared a big lunch, sort of a meat fondue. and lots of good stories about the freshman life away from home. We then joined up with Andy who works at the Chengdu airport. All of us walked to a Bamboo Park near Sichuan University. It was a nice park with lots of activities where people could try their hand at some old crafts and skills of China. The next day we met Nicole and Super Pig, (Charlie) freshmen students at Sichuan Normal University and about to be American bound to study at Pittsburg State. They took us to Nicole's hometown and planned a day around what they thought we would especially like. Both of them come from rather upper middle class families, and Charlie had a car to transport us. He is a very good driver. We had great conversation and learned some new ideas about Chinese history as well. Our last day we roamed around Shiling remembering our time there last summer, a good way to end our near month long travel.

TRAVELING IN CHINA

The Western New Year came and went. December 31st was a quiet night. We went to a New Year's "Ball," run by students, which was poorly attended. We enjoyed ourselves on an uncrowded dance floor. At 9:30, the usual end of dance time, we strolled back to our apartment and watched a video and Chinese TV. At midnight we listened for noise but heard none. I think in the big cities, like Chongqing there was some. The Chinese New Year was not until January 25 so January 1st was not a big day for them. I got to watch some bowl games thanks to a computer feed and enjoyed the short break from school. We had to make up the three day holiday. For us that meant rescheduling classes and compacting our exam schedule. We had to have all our grades ready and turned in by January 6. By grace, we did it.

January 7 we left Yongchuan for Chengdu. We had three days of inservice training. Mostly we were looking forward to seeing our friends from the summer. We had only seen the few who live in Chongqing. The language test went well and we both felt good about our progress. Thanks for your prayers. The sessions were long but the laughter was real. We met some new people, China 13's, and enjoyed them. We had some good meals with friends. We were able to explore the area around Sichuan University, so we feel more at home in the city. Two discoveries are worthy of note -- a Turkish restaurant and a bookstore/library called The Bookworm. Some China 13's introduced us to the restaurant, complete with hookahs, though we didn't sit on the floor on cushions the way they do in Turkey. Nor did we personally sample the pipes. The Bookworm bears some similarities to Borders though it is much, much smaller and most of the books are donated oldies but goodies. There are plenty of comfortable places to sit. Best of all IT WAS WARM. Rich and I had special fun reading a few books to two wee Chinese, a brother and a sister.

We left Chengdu to start our solo travels on January 11. We were helped to the airport by a student from my model school class, who seems to know all sorts of important things like the airline will send a van to pick you up if you have purchased your ticket ahead of time and you have it it hand. Yippee. Everything seemed to be going so smoothly. Then.... At the counter getting our boarding passes it was discovered that I had another volunteers passport and he probably had mine. We remembered that we had checked into the hotel at the same time and the mixup must have happened then. After some negotiation back and forth in second languages we were given boarding passes based on my copy of my passport -- take note *** one should always carry a copy of one's passport*** and my work permit (It has my picture and it lists my passport number) We left the errant passport at the airport for someone to pick up and hoped my passport would be forwarded to me. Security was skeptical, but we got through. The fight was uneventful but we wondered about our other flight and hotels which require passports. (Later the Peace Corps security person told me that he never heard of the airlines allowing someone to fly on the copy of a passport. The passport was never forwarded, and we spent all of our travels without one.) God is good.

We arrived in Kunming and were met by Li Yanlin and her father. We had met Yanlin on a previous trip to China, and she is now a student in America who has visited our home. They graciously got us dinner and drove us to where we would be staying on the Yunnan Agricultural University campus. We had a great four cold days in Kunming. It is the city of eternal spring, but not for our stay. We visited with Yanlin and her family, saw the campus, visited some sights around the city, and even explored by bus on our own. We felt good to be able to manage this, eat and make purchases. Most of all we got to meet some great people as we gathered at night around the table at Yanlin's home, Among them was a teenage boy whose English is better than most of my College Junior English majors. We also visited some young Chinese whom we had met on our trip to Kunming several years ago with Clifford Liu.

From Kunming we flew to Lijiang in the mountains of Yunnan Province. We were concerned about the cold, but the sun shown everyday and we were able to walk about without our winter coats. Lijiang is beautiful. The scene of Snow Mountain hovering over the pool of Black Dragon Pond is gorgeous. Each day we explored a little more of the old town, but there is still more to see and do. One exciting thing about our stay was that we were at Mama Naxi's Guest House. It is a "lonely Planet" recommended place. It was full each night with young people from all over the world. What a delight to sit around the table and talk with them. A second highlight was going to an unregistered church. We were escorted by a young Chinese missionary to a home on the outskirts of the city. What a great experience there and also with his family for the day. A third experience was in our search for a Buddhist temple. We could see it but we couldn't find a way to get there. We asked a number of people in our "great" Chinese. They kept pointing up. We went up. Near the top of the hill we still could see no signs of a path, so we asked once more. A wonderful man motioned that we should follow him. That was not too unusual because Chinese are very kind and often go out of their way to take us to a place we are seeking. However, he took us to his home where we had tea and fruit and a half an hour or more of conversation in two languages. Then he took us to the roof of his house and showed us the Buddhist temple on another hill (You can't get there from here.) The panorama was worth the climb in itself. We returned before we left Lijiang and had lunch with him. He says to come back, so maybe we will return to beautiful Lijiang. One funny thing about that second visit was that they were expecting company, the first ever visit from their son's girlfriend's family. The lady of the house was pretty upset with her husband for sitting around and saying he was not busy when she pretty obviously thought he should be. We couldn't understand the words, but the intent seemed pretty clear:)

Next we moved on to Dali. We did this bus totally on our own and got to our destination the Three Pagoda Youth Hostel just outside the north gate of the old city. We strolled the city and then returned to see what dinner around this table would be like. Totally different. The guests were Chinese, and English was at a premium. During dinner we expressed our hopes for the next day. After dinner as we talked with the receptionist trying to set up our day when two of the dinner guests appeared, and soon we were all planning. We had a delightful day with them and the receptionist and a private driver and even a meal. The two were teachers from Taiwan on holiday. One of the highlights was a performance by the Bai people which included the serving of "three cups of tea." I wish I had my book here so that I could read the significance of those three cups in Three Cups of Tea. But the day wasn't over. A young couple heard that we wanted to go to town for a Tibetan dinner and they invited us to join them - two more teachers, this time from Chongqing. A good meal and great conversation was had by all as we walked the city before and after dinner.

We were off to Kunming in the morning by bus. An accident on the road made it a long day. It also allowed us to experience the worst public toilet we have seen in China. IT was truly "any port in a storm" and it served the purpose. We returned to Yunnan Agricultural University for the night. There we had a feast of a dinner with the young English speaker's family and our hosts. Of course, everyone had to have breakfast together and then we experienced a mad dash to the airport in the congested traffic of Kunming. It was harrowing, but another memory for our growing memory bank. We will also remember lots of warm beds, which were very hard to leave each morning for the rest of our world, which was usually not at all warm. Even Lijiang and Dali started each day in chill mode.

There was some time constraint for our trip because of the Spring Festival which we were to celebrate with our Host Family from the summer. THAT IS THE NEXT STORY!